Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, is perhaps best described as a subscription service for food. You, as an eater and community member, support your farmer and the community culture of agriculture by paying in advance (“subscribing to a farm”) for vegetables or meat that you then receive on a pre-set timeline.

During the spring, summer, and fall, many farms offer a weekly or bi-weekly vegetable CSA. Most winter vegetable CSAs and meat CSAs work on a monthly timeline, due to both logistical factors of weather and transportation as well as the fact that frozen meat products and winter storage vegetables are not as perishable.